Decatur arts Festival

Today is Memorial Day so let me say from my heart "thank you" for all the service men and women who have given their lives and those who are now serving. Thanks for using your gift of service for which me and my family have been protected.

This is a day of recuperation for Guiteau and me. We are staying in Decatur an extra day since we don't have to be in Philadelphia until Thursday afternoon. We had planned to stay until Wednesday morning but have changed plans to visit Guiteau's Mom in New Jersey. She has been staying in New Jersey since April and this is a great opportunity to see her and Guiteau's brother Peter. Guiteau's Mom lives in Port au Prince, Haiti but revisits every 6 months to keep her green card active.

To summarize the Decatur Arts Festival, it was a cliffhanger. By that I mean that we really didn't make the sales we had hoped for until the very last couple of hours. Guiteau won third place overall in the juried competition which means he is automatically reinvited for next year's show and he received $100 prize money. We received so many enthusiastic comments about his work that we were sure this was going to be a fabulous show. However, we made only one sale on Saturday and Sunday nothing happened until late in the day. The results ended up very favorably with total sales slightly more than our average. Thanks to God for being right on time.

Today we are going to the art supply store to pick up some paints and pastel pencils that we forgot to bring with us. Our next painting time will be in Buffalo after the Rittenhouse art show. Some of the larger pieces we sold were from Guiteau's new collection of primitives. That was exciting since we think these are a great direction for his work.

It is about 8:30 this morning. Guiteau is still asleep and obviously I am not. He definitely does more physical work taking the booth down and lifting the very heavy artwork. We were grateful we found a willing worker to help us load out from the show. His name is Jeff and he was one of the best hard working young men we have met.

So long for now. Probably won't post until Philadelphia. God bless you all.